Exhausted Ecologies: Modernism and Environmental Recovery

This book evaluates twentieth century British and Global Anglophone literature in relation to the growth of ecological thinking in the United Kingdom. Restless modernists such as D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, and Jean Rhys developed a literary aesthetic of slowness and immediacy to critique the exhausting and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and industrial life. At the same time, environmental groups such as the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves and the Smoke Abatement League moved from economic registers of 'value' and 'trust' to more cultural terms of 'recovery' and 'regeneration' to position nature as a healing force in the postwar era. Through a variety of literary, scientific, and political texts, an environmental movement emerged alongside the fast, fragmented, and traumatic aspects of modernization in order to sustain place and community in terms of lateral influence and ecological dependence.

Author: Andrew Kalaidjian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 01/23/2020
Pages: 342
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781108477918

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2020

About the Author
Kalaidjian, Andrew: - Andrew Kalaidjian is Assistant Professor of English at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He received his Ph.D. in English from University of California, Santa Barbara and his BA from Columbia University. A former University of California Graduate Fellow in Humanities, he is the recipient of the Seymour Brick Prize for Playwriting, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Fellowship for European Research, and the Richard Helgerson Graduate Student Achievement Award.